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Weekly Update - August 20, 2016: Duo, Hangouts on Air, Google+ and more

It's all about communication: This week Google’s new 1:1 mobile video calling app launched, and Google explained that Hangouts will focus on collaboration and business.

Google also announced that Hangouts on Air would be moving from Google+ to YouTube Live. There are a bunch of tips for broadcasters to get ready for the move (and no, Google is not “killing” HOAs).

The Google+ apps for Android and iOS got an updated and Collection searches have been improved all platforms.

YouTube Gaming is now available in Germany, YouTube Red is available in Mexico, and YouTube Space London got a new bigger home.

Outside the Googleverse: Tsu and Blab are dead, Facebook launched a new app for teens and Twitter now lets you choose who can notify you.

Plus there are tips and updates for Google Forms, Street View, Chrome, Blogger, AdSense and more.

Image: From the cover of the Electrical Experimenter (May 1918). It illustrated an article by the magazine’s publisher - and notable science fiction writer - Hugo Gernsbach about “Television and the Telephot”:

The future instrument on which the name "Telephot" (from the Greek tele-is.r, photos-light) has been settled, is supposedly an apparatus attachable to our present telephone system, so that when we speak to our distant friend, we may see his likeness not only as an immovable picture, but we will see his image exactly as we see our own image when looking into a mirror. In other words, the apparatus must faithfully follow every movement of our distant friend whether he is only five blocks away or one thousand miles. That such an invention is urgently required is needless to say. Everybody would wish to have such an instrument, and it is safe to say that such a device would revolutionize our present mode of living, just as much as the telephone revolutionized our former standard of living.[... snip …]The future instrument must work the same as the telephone. In other words, all the subscriber has to do is to lift the receiver off the hook, and he will immediately see his friend just as if he were talking to him in the same room. All these requirements may seem hard on the inventor, but they are absolutely necessary as a simple reflection will show.

And now, almost a century later, we have a variety of video calling apps to choose from. Will Duo (or any of its competitors) become as ubiquitous as the the telephone? Only time will tell.